How to walk up to the next note

[DavC]

listen to a lot of Stevie Ray Vaughn & Double Trouble .... !!!!!

 

[Clarence Walker]

Dig into some Willy Dixon or old Chess blues recordings.

 

[bassbully]

Dirt simple. Target the next root and then miss it by one, two, or three frets. Then walk to it using one, two, or three frets and land on the next root dead on the chord change.

Country has been using a three note chromatic walk for a long time. Trick is to leave early, do the walk and land on the next root note for the chord change. Timing the leave early will take some practice, other than that it's dirt simple.

^^^ right here listen to some old school country or blues and practice to it.

 

[RustyAxe]

Scales my friend ... there's no way around knowing your scales. And not just scale patterns on the bass, you need to know what notes are part of each scale. Your walk-ups and walk-downs (because that's what we're talking about ... not true walking bass lines) will be different in major and minor keys. You might use different notes if the underlying chord is a 7th, 6th, 9th ... whatever. This is probably a lot more than you wanted to hear.

 

[cchorney]

I do a lot of the chromatic walks and they work well. The other main option being to walk a chordal progression. Something else you might try is, instead of a chromatic walk, keep it in key and for that 2nd to last note before the target note, go up one higher and then back down.

Example, going from G to D, instead of going G B C C# D, go G B C E D.

 

[pdbass]

 

[IamGroot]

GOOD VIDEO on a bassic technique

 

[mambo4]

If anyone has some excerices to help practice this lmk!

Igor's Chromatic Exercise from the book Standing in the Shadows of Mowtown comes to mind.

also Adam Neely's walking video

 

[LeeNunn]

If you like the blues, I like the suggestions of Canned Heat and The Lemmon Song. Larry Taylor's line on Skat was the first walking line I ever learned. If you like jazz blues, you might check out Ray Brown's line on Natalie Cole's version of Route 66. That might be my favorite walking bass line. The transcriptions show the chord changes so that you can see which notes are chord tones. Learning and analyzing your favorite walking lines is a great way to learn to walk. Why recreate the wheel? Learn from the masters.

Submission - Skat - Canned Heat's Larry Taylor's Bass Line
Submission - The Lemon Song by Led Zeppelin
Submission - Route 66 by Natalie Cole and Ray Brown

 

[Snarf]

Examples in 4/4 include C up to F chromatically (C-C#-D-E-F)

This example only works in jazz, IME. Country or blues, not so much.